The Saddle Arabia Diaries

Entry 1: Blood on the Beach

Captain Shining Armor

Homeguard Unit, Designation One-Alpha-Echo

0303 hours, January 14 2013

Jalahar Province, off the coast of Saddle Arabia

We were cold, colder than ice, than snow, chilled to the bone. Our breath was like smoke in the frosty air, curling and dissipating in the night. The waves broke silently against the hull of the iron boat, occasionally spraying us with sea salt. The folds of my fatigues contained little pockets of saltwater that further chilled me. The fatigues themselves did little to help against the freezing temperatures, and my Kevlar helmet trapped cold air underneath it, blasting my mane and horn with frost.

My boat was one of forty-six that plowed soundlessly through the icy water, en route to LP [Landing Point] Mustang on the shores of the Arabian Sea. We had our uniforms, desert fatigues with patterns to help us blend in with the arid surroundings. I was wearing the signature Homeguard red-and-black uniform with a dark jacket over my Kevlar vest. We had our rifles, standard M4A1s with scopes and NODs [Night Optics Devices] and ammo ports, so a unicorn didn’t have to hook up to an ammunition unit back at base in order to restock his gun. We each had a Beretta sidearm and a couple of frag grenades. Some of the ponies in my unit carried M249s or M240Bs, while others had outfitted their M4s to the point where they looked like futuristic space guns instead of modern day military weaponry.

The only thing we didn’t have was an enemy to shoot at.

I couldn’t do a warming spell, as no doubt the Saddle Arabian Predator drones would pick up the MDR signal, so I was more than relieved to see a large campfire burning on the white beach, set up by boys from the 81st Infantry and men from Joint Ops – Canterlot Sector, who we in the Homeguard liked to call ‘jocks’ or ‘jokes’, depending on whether you liked them or not. The boat glided onto the beach and stopped. The operation commander, Barnabus Buckner, signaled from the shore for the boat operative to drop the ramp, and with a soft thud, the ramp touched down, and I felt cold sand underneath my hooves.

“Captain Armor!”

Commander Buckner and his second, Lieutenant Darkblood, came up to me and saluted. I saluted back and cleared my throat.

“Gentlemen. How’s the situation looking?”

“A lot better now that you showed up with the Homeguard,” Buckner said. “Could you walk with me? And bring your men.”

I nodded and called out to the twenty-or-so guys in my unit, each burly and carrying several pounds of equipment. The beach was a flurry of activity, with ponies moving right and left to set up equipment and vehicles for the inland push. Darkblood noticed where I was looking and smiled.

“We should have done this a long time ago,” he said. “Saddam Hussar won’t be expecting an attack from the north.”

“Are you sure? They’ve got Predators, you know.”

“We know, but we’re prepared for them. We’ve got AA and AT [Anti-Air and Anti-Tank], courtesy of the Crystal Empire. Anything flies where we don’t want it flying, it goes down in a ball of fire.”

“It’s good that we’ve rendezvoused with the Aquastrians, but with all due respect, sir, do you really think this is a good idea? I mean, sending all of our troops north, just to meet with the sea ponies and attack from behind?”

“Yes, I do, actually,” the commander huffed. “We aren’t taking much ground from the south. Hell, last month damn RSA [Republic of Saddle Arabia] troops nearly drove us back to the border! No, we take ‘em from here. They won’t be expecting a naval attack, and once we take Zakirabad, Hussar will be shitting his pants in fear.”

I cringed. “So what’s the plan?”

Commander Buckner took over the conversation. “The plan is to get all of our forces together, all HAPOCs [Head Assault Pony Operation Centers], and launch a trident offensive on Zakirabad.”

“Zakirabad?” I asked. They nodded.

“It’s home to one of Hussar’s major arms production facilities. If Zakirabad falls, then Naghdad should be easy pickings.”

I thought for a second as a few passing soldiers saluted us.

“Why not just scramble a few jets and take the facility out? Put some JDAM [Join Direct Attack Munition] strikes in there?”

Buckner shook his head. “Too many civilian casualties. Besides, they have AAPs all over the perimeter.”

I understood immediately. AAPs were Anti-Air Pegasi, and they could knock a squadron of F-22s out of the sky in no time whatsoever.

“So infantry assault?”

Darkblood nodded. “Correct, Captain. But we’ve also got tank and APC [Armored Personnel Carrier] shipments as well as an artillery attachment from our boys in the south. After we take out their anti-air, we can call as many wings in as we want. If we push hard, we can surround Zakirabad before dawn breaks.”

“That’s good to hear,” I said as we stopped on a small dune. “I’m happy to contribute my men in any way possible, gentlemen.”

“Splendid!” Buckner said. “We need a guard detail on our communications outpost up that ridge. I know, I know, it’s grunt work, but right now I’ve got no units to spare. Do you think—?”

“I’ll do it, Commander,” I said. He was right, it was grunt work. But he was operation commander. I wasn’t about to deny his orders.

“Good to hear it, Captain Armor. Comms landed about an hour ago, and right now Chatterbox is up there trying to get a signal. Take your men up the hill and set up security. You’ll mobilize with the rest of us when the time is right.”

With that, we saluted each other, and despite the groans of my men, we walked up the hill toward the comms post.

Chatterbox was our radio pony, the stallion who worked the comms and mikes during operations and setups. He was a messy pony with a mane that reached down to his hooves, and I assumed he only looked like that because he was in Special Services, where they were much more lenient toward how you dressed and presented yourself.

As the rest of Homeguard 1AE set up a perimeter, I went to talk with him. He did not look please to see me.

“You want something, man?”

He didn’t even salute. I held back my annoyance.

“I’m Captain Shining Armor of Homeguard One-Alpha-Echo. Commander Buckner assigned us to your station on protection detail.”

“Pffh!” he said dismissively, tinkering with electronic equipment that I knew nothing about. “As if I needed protection. You and that softie Buckner better watch your rump, if a sniper were to pick us off they’d go for the officers first…”

“Hey, shut up! And keep your voice down!” I snapped. “He’ll throw you in lockup if he heard you!”

“He ain’t General Clopton, man. Even Commanders don’t got authority over Special Services, you know? C’mon, man. He ain’t much of a commander.” He held his hooves up. “‘Wouldja kindly do this? Wouldja kindly do that? Please, if it ain’t too much trouble, fire back at the enemy.’ You’d think a damn commander would grow some damn balls.”

I probably should have punished him or cited him for such insolence, but it was true. Even the Homeguard didn’t have any real authority over Special Services. They were a league of their own. As for Commander Buckner, troops respected his word, but his voice was definitely not the loudest on the battlefield.

“Fine. Just finish up. I don’t wanna have to foalsit you all night.”

“Hey, chill out, sir,” he replied, chuckling at his own joke. It was still freezing cold, and the warmth of the campfire around which many of the ponies in my unit sat was so tantalizing.

Chatterbox got to work on setting up the monitors and other equipment, and I sat on a stool underneath his awning, looking up into the moonlight, searching for the mare in the moon. I started to think of home. I wondered what Twilight was doing back in Ponyville. Probably boning up on her studies or hanging out with her friends. I chatted with her via Skype back at Camp Stallion, my home base. Of course she’d been happy to see me, but she was used to me being gone for long periods of time. After all, I’d been Captain of the Royal Guard at Canterlot before the war broke out and I was assigned to the brand new Homeguard unit. Three months later, I’d gone from Camp Stallion all the way up to the Barren Sea, where the Equestrian Navy hooked up with the Aquastrians and shipped us to LP Mustang, at the northernmost tip of Saddle Arabia.

“…that wrench?”

“Huh?”

“Pass me that wrench, will ya?” Chatterbox said, holding out his hoof.

I passed him the wrench, still thinking. So far we’d managed to push the Arabians away from Equestria, and now somepony got the idea that we should join our Aquastrian allies and flank from the north seas, while the rest of our boys chipped away at their defenses from the south. To me the idea was both brilliant and ridiculous. It was true that Commandant Hussar would not be expecting a full-scale attack from the sea, but I thought we had wasted far too much time moving all our troops onto the Aquastrian aircraft carriers and seabases. Plus we’d left most of our heavy-duty equipment, like our heavy artillery, behind. With no heavy guns and no air support, it was going to be real tough to take Zakirabad, never mind Naghdad.

And there I was, sitting on my rump on a hill on the beach, freezing my tail off as I foalsitted the mechanic…

But this was still a Homeguard’s job. A Homeguard was supposed to protect his men and his country no matter where, what, or when his situation is. I’d seen quite a bit of action in my months as a Homeguard, enough to make some ponies go crazy. I guess I welcomed the rare moments of calm that showed up amidst the heinous carnage of war. Normally army captains don’t see much action, but I was in Homeguard. We functioned a little bit differently from the regular army boys. That was why Buckner and Darkblood sought me out in the first place. As for looking bad in front of the other soldiers, I didn’t worry. I still got respect from everypony I met as soon as they saw my black-and-red fatigues and the Homeguard insignia on my shoulder, a black stallion’s red-eyed head flanked by twin M16s.

“HAPOC Twenty, HAPOC Twenty, this is HAPOC Ten, do you read?”

Chatterbox had gotten the radio to work and was trying to talk to the men that had landed further down the beach. All I heard was static, but as I sighed and watched my breath dissipate into the chilly night, a voice came on.

“Roger, Ten, this is HAPOC Twenty. Go for niner.”

Chatterbox did a little happy gesture with his hoof, but then the voice spoke again.

“Ten, be advised that HAPOC Six and Twelve both report IR flashes in the south hills. They’re saying…yeah, they’re saying it looks like Arabians. Might be changers and eagleheads as well, over.”

Changers and eagleheads. Changelings and griffons. Government mercenaries. I tensed, and Chatterbox’s grin vanished. He turned to me. “The Commander will want to hear this. Will you get him?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said before galloping down the hill. All along the beach, ponies were unpacking equipment and issuing orders. We were to initiate advancement when the sun went up, mostly because of the cloud cover provided by our pegasi allies. But if changelings and griffons had been spotted…

“Commander Buckner, sir!”

The black-maned, blue-coated unicorn turned around at the sound of my voice. “Yes, Captain?”

“HAPOCs Six and Twelve are reporting enemy sightings. Comms thought you’d want to hear for yourself.”

“You bet your rump I want to hear for myself! Starrier, Moonbeam, get Darkblood then follow me!”

We trekked up the hillside to the outpost. Chatterbox was in a frenzied state, with sweat dotting his brow despite the cold.

“Sir, the situation doesn’t sound good,” he said as the lieutenant trotted up. “Now HAPOCs Eight and Nine are reporting enemy visuals, and…”

“HAPOC Nine? But ain’t we HAPOC Ten?” the one called Moonbeam asked, arriving with Darkblood and the other grunt, Starrier.

“We’re HAPOC Ten,” I answered.

“Son of a bitch,” Darkblood cursed. “We need to ready our defenses. If opfor sees us coming this whole operation will be blown.”

The radio crackled to life again. The operator sounded worried.

“Ten, this is HAPOC Twenty. Now we’ve got opfor sightings at…oh, mother…Six has ceased communication. Are you getting anything from them?”

Chatterbox fiddled with a few knobs on the radio dashboard, but only static came from the speaker. “Negative, Twenty, Six is unresponsive.”

Suddenly I heard it.

A low, quick sound, muffled by the fog. It sounded like somepony beating a drum very fast.

“Ten, be advised, Eight is reporting shots fired on the embankment! HAPOC Twelve has gone dark! We are detected, I repeat, we are detected!”

“Shit!” Commander Buckner cursed. He too had heard the gunfire. “Captain, get to your squad leader and prepare a defensive line! Those shots will reach us soon, and we need to have an answer! Starrier, stay with the comms. Moonbeam, go with Captain Armor and give his unit some backup firepower! And bellow down the line!”

Bellow down the line. Code for tell everypony you see that hell is about to erupt around your hooves.

“How the buck did they find us? I thought this beachhead was cleared!”

“It bucking was! They must have snuck up on us!”

“Bucking damn it! If they expose us, this whole operation is toast!”

“How many are there?”

“Who the buck knows? A hundred?”

“No, shit, more than that! GET TO YOUR LINE!”

Where that had been order, there was now only chaos. At least it was controlled. Everypony knew where they had to go. Infantry stallions hit the lines of the hills where the HAPOCs stood, while the artillery remained on the beach. Sniper divisions began to flank the oncoming enemy. I ran for the hills, meeting up with Major Fetlock of the 102nd Infantry Brigade. He was entrenched in a wide ditch in front of HAPOC Ten, as were the infantry from HAPOCs One through Twenty. Soon hundreds of soldiers were cemented in the makeshift trenches in front of their command centers, stretching for about a mile up and down LP Mustang. Fetlock was firing his SAW at the tall embankment that overshadowed LP Mustang, about a half-mile away. I saw more muzzle flashes from the hills and dunes to the south. I looked down the line and saw that somepony had already been hit. A young unicorn was bleeding badly from the chest as the medic unicorns attended to him. He couldn’t have been older than nineteen.

Major Fetlock stopped firing to reload his LMG, and I shouted over the gunfire. “Major Fetlock! Homeguard’s gonna set up a line in those rocks over there!” I pointed to an array of boulders a few hundred feet from where we stood. “We need suppressing fire!”

“Whatever you want, you got it, Captain! You hear that, maggots?! FULL FIRE!”

With that everypony in Fetlock’s unit raised his weapon and fired, as my men and a few ponies from Moonbeam’s platoon made for the rocks. The ground blew up around me, but I ignored it. Gunfire wasn’t new to me.

As my unit took cover in the rocks and began firing at the enemy, Commander Buckner’s voice came over my earpiece. “All units and HAPOCs, be advised that the enemy is confirmed RSA. They knew we were coming, boys, but the operation is still a go. We push forward, and we’re gonna take Zakirabad.”

A cheer went up and down the beach, only to be drowned out as the gunfire increased, intermixed with the mortar fire that rained down on the Arabian soldiers. Someone on my radio reminded me to switch to NODs, so I did, pulling my night-vision goggles down from my helmet and watching as the world around me turned green and black. I lined up one soldier in my sights, a beret-wearing mustached unicorn with eyes full of hate, and squeezed the trigger, feeling the rifle butt slam into my shoulder. I saw a flash of darker green erupt from the pony’s head, and he went down.

“Scratch one!” I yelled to my troops, who cheered. Some of them didn’t answer, too busy firing at the enemy. Meanwhile voices came and went on the radio.

“Multiple hostiles engaged! Fire on the embankment!”

“RPG inbound!”

I saw a flash and a trail of smoke, and suddenly HAPOC Six went up in flames.

“SHIT! HAPOC Six is Oscar Charlie!”

“Where the buck is HAPOC Twelve?”

“We need to get off the beach! We’re sitting ducks here!”

I fired and fired, reloading when I had to, but there seemed to be no end to the muzzle flashes and the sand that snapped up around me. Suddenly, about a half-hour into the fighting, I heard the caw of an eagle. Sure enough, griffons flew down out of the sky and dropped mortar rounds on us. An explosion rocked the trenches in front of HAPOC Ten, and a ruptured propane tank spread fire all over a group of ponies. They flailed and screamed, but were quickly silenced as they became easy targets for sharpshooters from the overlooking cliffs. My heart grew sick, and I continued to peek over the rocks and fire my gun, reloading whenever necessary.

It went on like that for over an hour. I saw a few more men go down, but I didn’t hear about any fatalities over the radio. Soon a message came over the comms that the government troops were trying to jam our communications, and that’s why we couldn’t get anything out of HAPOC Twelve. Suddenly Buckner came over the radio again, this time addressing me specifically.

“Captain! Do you have an open link with the Aquastrians?”

I passed down the question to Chatterbox, and I nearly burst with happiness when I heard the answer.

“Confirmed, we still have the link!”

“We’re not gonna get these bastards with bullets alone. One of our scout pegasi just did a layover. They have a whole bucking division set up in those hills and on that embankment. We need some air support. Get Chatterbox to scramble an Apache or two from the Celestia!”

I struggled to hear him over the gunfire. The ESS Celestia was one of only two Equestrian Navy aircraft carriers. The navy wasn’t that big, tiny compared to the mammoth Aquastrian Navy, but it was big enough. The commander was right. An Apache would make short work of the government soldiers attacking from the ridgeline and hills. I pushed the talk button on my earpiece.

“Yes, sir!”

No response. I figured the commander was busy trying to stay alive and make tactical plans. I made my way across the rocks, keeping my head down, until I caught sight of a pony with a bright green mane.

“Chatterbox! Keep your head down!” I yelled, knowing that his hair would make him an ideal target. Chatterbox came over to me, slinging his heavily-modified M4 over his shoulder.

“Captain Armor!”

“Chatterbox, I need you to radio the Celestia and tell them we need CAS [Close Air Support]! Apaches, jets, pegasi, whatever!”

“Roger, sir!” With that Chatterbox pulled out a mini-radio from his pocket and began to chatter off.

“One-Echo-Twelve, One-Echo-Twelve, this is LP Mustang, requesting air support, over.”

We waited a few seconds, then a voice came over the other end.

“Roger, Mustang, Apaches are inbound. Stand by.”

Chatterbox smiled. “Copy, One-Echo-Twelve. Out.” He looked at me. “Tell Buckner.”

I nodded, pressing my hoof to my earpiece. “Commander Buckner, we have Apaches inbound!”

“Roger, Captain.” Then the commander switched to all frequencies. “All units, be advised we have Apaches inbound. Get yourselves out of the line of fire and let the birds do their work.”

So we did just that, pulling back as the ground snapped up around us. The choppers’ ETA was about fifteen minutes, so we had little else to do but wait for the rolling fire. In the meantime there were plenty of things to shoot at. Soon the RPGs fell silent, and only the constant crackle of gunfire broke the otherwise tranquil night. A fire was burning to my left. Which HAPOC was that? Did it matter?

It went on and on like a never-ending nightmare, but I knew this was only the beginning. There would be many more battles like this, and I knew that—

“Choppers inbound! Get down!”

No sooner had the command gone out than did two AH-64s soar overhead and pepper the cliffs with 30mm rounds, mixed in with a few Hellfire missiles that lit up the night sky like a fireworks display. Those of us with NODs were practically blinded by the explosions, but we cheered with the rest of the soldiers as the gunfire tapered off until it stopped completely. The Apaches did a little roll to salute us, then flew back to the sea.

That moment more than ever I appreciated how we had teamed with the Aquastrians. Without those helicopters we might have been overrun. I took off my NOD, as the fires from the blown-up HAPOCs lit up the night enough to see. I sat on my rump, unsure of what to do next.

But Buckner certainly wasn’t. Within the hour he had all HAPOCs restored and had us going up the cliffs to scan for any survivors of the Apache barrage. There were none. After we returned, we had unexpected news: our heavy craft, including our artillery and our tanks, had been cleared for deployment. They were on their way in an Aquastrian ship and would arrive the next morning.

I rejoiced along with the rest of my men, but I knew that far more dangerous roads lay ahead of us. But that night, we celebrated what must have been the first major victory for Equestria since we’d been pushed back to the border.

The push for Zakirabad—and for Saddle Arabia—had begun.